Alopecia drove Rowsell to greatness

Great Britain's (left to right) Dani King, Joanna Rowsell and Laura Trott celebrate after winning the women's team pursuit
5 August 2012

As she completed a lap of honour after winning Olympic gold, cyclist Joanna Rowsell pulled off her helmet to proudly reveal her bald head.

Having lived with the hair loss condition alopecia since childhood, the 23-year-old has not flinched from speaking about her condition. Indeed she says her hair loss has helped drive her on to greatness. And her win in the women's cycling team pursuit at the velodrome could not have come at a better time - it fell on International Alopecia Day which seeks to raise awareness of the condition.

She said a fan contacted her on Twitter on Saturday to tell her about the special day: "I thought, 'Wow, that's a bit spooky that our Olympic final is the same day'."

She added: "I hope I can be an inspiration to other girls with the condition and help raise awareness of it.

"When I was younger I used to focus really hard on my school work. I wasn't really confident on going out and doing the usual teenage things. I didn't have much confidence in my appearance and I became very, very focused on my studies.

"But when cycling came along that was another thing for me to focus on and suddenly it didn't matter what I looked like, it was about how I performed on the bike and that's what I was judged on. That was great. When I started winning that was the best feeling ever. I wasn't going to stop; I wasn't going to let it hold me back. You only live once, so go for it."

She said she had received messages of support from the public which helped on her way to victory. "It was amazing because I never really had that response before from the public," she added.

Rowsell, Laura Trott and Dani King smashed three world records en route to the gold medal.

Speaking after her podium appearance, she said: "You never want to be complacent but we had had a great day and I felt we had more to give coming into the final race. The atmosphere was tremendous and the crowd helped drive us on."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in